A step-by-step guide to maximizing paid and organic growth on your Facebook page.

Over the past few months, we’ve recommended using Facebook advertising to grow a business or event Facebook page to a number of clients. When we’ve done this, our clients have usually said “How do we achieve this?”.

Because it isn’t as intuitive as it perhaps might be, and because Facebook has tinkered a little with their advertising section, we’re producing a step-by-step guide on getting some more “Likes” on your company or event Facebook page (by paying cash money!).

Note that links in this article will open in a new window or tab to allow you to refer back and forth!

Step One – Create a Facebook Page

This step I am not going to explain here, but it should go without saying that in order to advertise a Facebook page, you need to actually have one.

Note that the fake profile for your business or event you probably set up three or four years ago isn’t what I am talking about – I am talking about a Facebook page for business. If you don’t already have one, create one here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/

Step Two – Link to Your Facebook Page from Your Website(s)

Before (and during) any paid promotion, it would make sense for you to link your company website(s), blog(s) and social media profile(s) to your Facebook page, in order to pick up those free “likes” (and consequent viral “likes”) that are available to your business.

If you want help setting up a company website or blog, or managing your social media presence, please feel free to contact Silicon Dales.

Step Three – Choose An Advertising Administrator

Before you get into the how, work out the who. Who will be managing your Facebook advertising campaign(s)?

This person needs to be the one who sets things up using his or her Facebook account. Use a person you trust, and who won’t leave the business in a hurry. Probably, then, use a director or major stakeholder’s Facebook account. Certainly it needs to be someone with access to a company credit card (or the company PayPal account).

For ease of everything, this person should also have full admin rights on the relevant Facebook page(s).

Step Four – Setup Your Facebook Advertising

When you have settled on how you will be paying your ad bills (note funds come out in USD, and some card issuers charge additional fees for this), now is the time to go about setting up your Facebook advertising account and launching your first ad.

Visit here: https://www.facebook.com/advertising

Note you should be logged in as the Facebook user who will manage your ad campaign.

Step Five – Click the “Create an Ad” button & Setup Your Ad

Once you’ve hit this button, you will be getting into building your first advertising campaign. We’re going for Page Likes, so select the page you’d like to boost from the list.

When you have clicked the page in question, you’ll be faced with three options for that page. The first one “Get More Page Likes” is already selected by default. Leave it this way!

Sponsored Stories – these can be very powerful, virally, as they show up in Facebook user’s feed when their friends are connected to your page.

Step Six – Your Advert

This is probably the most important step. It is your opportunity to MAKE people click like. For example, you should probably tell people to press like, in order to get them to do it!

Headline

“Love Music? Hit “Like”!”

Body

“Rock music Festival in Cheltenham @ Venue on 30 June 2013”

Use your Facebook page image – you did set it to be your excellent logo, didn’t you?!

Step Seven – Choose Your Audience

You will have very clearly defined audience characteristics. For example, if you are putting on a music festival in Cheltenham, you will want to promote (first and foremost) to music lovers in that area.

I recommend going for a city in the middle of your catchment zone and selecting “within 25 miles” and then using Facebook’s broad categories to define your audience somewhat (so, for our example, use “Music > Rock” assuming it is a rock festival!).

Be sure to setup your age targetting correctly too – if your event is for adults, or principally aimed at adults, then make the minimum age 18 – you don’t want to burn budget advertising to all the 13-18 year olds on Facebook!

Step Eight – Campaign Pricing

By default, you’re getting optimized CPM (cost per mille = cost per 1,000 impression) advertising using this Facebook advertising option. I suggest you leave this. What you need to decide is how much budget per day you are willing to commit to this advertising, and how long your campaign is to run.

Let’s return to our example. Imagine you are putting on a rock music festival which takes place on the 30th June 2013. It will probably make sense to end your campaign 3-5 days before your festival takes place, as you’re looking to make advanced ticket sales, and very few people will buy on the day before!

So set up the campaign dates, and the maximum you are prepared to pay either per day, or for the duration of the campaign (though I would recommend per day budgeting as you can toggle this during the campaign and maximise success) and then, when you have double checked, hit “Place Order”. If this is your first ad, you may have to setup your payment details.

Step Nine – Confirmation

You now have to wait for your ad to be reviewed. Assuming you didn’t say anything silly in the copy, then you should be okay. This can take (from my experience) anywhere between 5 minutes and a couple of hours. You will receive a Facebook notification and an email when your ad goes “live”

Step Ten – Review, Review, Review

Check the stats on your ad. Are you getting good return on investment? A good rule of thumb is if you are picking up 1 like for every (very very rough guide) $0.20 or so spent. If you are spending more than this per like, then maybe your ad copy or targeting need a little look, or you are simply in a competitive or unpopular niche!

Ask The Experts

Leave a question or comment below if you would like to find out more about advertising on Facebook for your business. Remember this is a difficult thing to get right, and it takes a little practice.

What Do We Know?

We have grown Facebook pages from zero to 60,000+ in a matter of weeks, using budgets which even the smallest businesses can afford. Generally speaking, it is about being creative, non-salesy, and honest with your audience. They will respond well to this!